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China to expand weather modification program to cover area larger than India

2 points by clouddrover 6y ago

onecommentman 6y ago
Instinctively, this sounds unwise in the same way that a lot of big science ideas in the 1960s sounded foolish years ago, e.g. using atomic weapons to build canals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare It also sounds like it faces the same resource allocation problem that oil reservoirs across political boundaries face, except the reservoir is in the sky and constantly being recharged. So who will play the role of the Texas Railroad Commission for clouds? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_of_Texas Silly ideas of big science died in the West in part because of the sort of political resistance that current China seems determined to weaken/squash. This makes China’s involvement in these schemes more problematic. Who would have stopped Mao from building canals with H-bombs? Who would stop Xi? Still, a lot of neat science and modeling work to be done to evaluate the ideas...
dirtyid 6y ago
>lack of proper coordination of weather modification activity (could) lead to charges of 'rain stealing' between neighboring regions," both within China and with other countries. I wonder if there's a map of regions most susceptible to 'rain stealing' via geoengineering and those who are most vulnerable. Some numbers from 8 years ago: >Guo Xueliang, director of the artificial weather intervention center under the CMA, said total atmospheric water in China is typically 30 trillion tons per year while annual rainfall is about 6 trillion tons. “At least one more percent of cloud water could be transferred to rainfall every year, roughly 280 billion tons." >the country would seek to increase precipitation by 3 to 5 percent in the next five years through cloud-seeding. >In March, Zheng said the potential of average artificial rainfall could reach up to 280 billion tons per year, which is equal to seven times of the storage capacity of the Three Gorges Dam. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2012-08-13/stormy-weather-on-cloud-seeding-101015335.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2012-08-13/stormy-weather-on-cl...

2 points by clouddrover 6y ago

Instinctively, this sounds unwise in the same way that a lot of big science ideas in the 1960s sounded foolish years ago, e.g. using atomic weapons to build canals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare It also sounds like it faces the same resource allocation problem that oil reservoirs across political boundaries face, except the reservoir is in the sky and constantly being recharged. So who will play the role of the Texas Railroad Commission for clouds? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_of_Texas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_of_Texas Silly ideas of big science died in the West in part because of the sort of political resistance that current China seems determined to weaken/squash. This makes China’s involvement in these schemes more problematic. Who would have stopped Mao from building canals with H-bombs? Who would stop Xi? Still, a lot of neat science and modeling work to be done to evaluate the ideas...

dirtyid 6y ago

>lack of proper coordination of weather modification activity (could) lead to charges of 'rain stealing' between neighboring regions," both within China and with other countries. I wonder if there's a map of regions most susceptible to 'rain stealing' via geoengineering and those who are most vulnerable. Some numbers from 8 years ago: >Guo Xueliang, director of the artificial weather intervention center under the CMA, said total atmospheric water in China is typically 30 trillion tons per year while annual rainfall is about 6 trillion tons. “At least one more percent of cloud water could be transferred to rainfall every year, roughly 280 billion tons." >the country would seek to increase precipitation by 3 to 5 percent in the next five years through cloud-seeding. >In March, Zheng said the potential of average artificial rainfall could reach up to 280 billion tons per year, which is equal to seven times of the storage capacity of the Three Gorges Dam. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2012-08-13/stormy-weather-on-cloud-seeding-101015335.html https://www.caixinglobal.com/2012-08-13/stormy-weather-on-cl...